Banjos, always a good word to start a sentence, nowadays are far more likely to be heard fused with traditional folk music or found hitching a lift on the back of a bluegrass Americana wagon than appearing, as they used to, clunking away in the service of trad jazz. And thank goodness for that.
Béla Fleck, back in the 1990s, began this process of renewal paving the way to a new rock fusion with the Flecktones, a more fusion-heavy approach than anything you’ll hear from Norwegian band Open String Department who make their yee-hawing debut with the imaginative Fringe Music, an album dreamt up apparently on a road trip through the Appalachians.
Guesting accordionist Stian Carstensen, who also unabashedly wields a banjo, joins Magnus Wiik (banjos, mandolin, dobro, and guitar) – who has also written most of the tunes – and guitarist Espen Bjarnar, bassist Aksel Jensen, and another guest, fiddler Ola Kvernberg scrabblingly-hyper when called upon. There’s plenty of open improvising common sense and bags of spirit ‘Dobros Before Hos’ all tentative exploration and frantic strumming by the end. The ballad ‘Nødblues’ is the pick, no pun intended, a lazily effective haystack of a thing complete with laidback pitch bend wizardry and a winning melody. No need to line-dance, pay the devil, or challenge anyone to a banjo duel to get this. Released on 5 December